Computer enabled method and apparatus to inhibit content and other copying

ABSTRACT

Provided here is a copy protection method and apparatus to confuse currently available personal computer software (and other content) copying packages by use of unexpected (“illegal”) special characters in the volume (or directory) name for the software or other content or data subject to being copied. This method can be used alone or with a broad range of other known copy protection technologies such as RipGuard (available from Macrovision Corp.). Also provided here is a method and apparatus to defeat the confusion method, thereby allowing copying of such copy protected software.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION

This nonprovisional application is based on and claims priority to U.S.Provisional Application No. 61/002,145 filed with the U.S. Patent andTrademark Office on Nov. 6, 2007, the entire contents of which arehereby incorporated by reference.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

Prevention of computer content and software (including data) copying,and a method to defeat same.

BACKGROUND

Software and content piracy (unauthorized copying) by “hackers” orcommercial entities is a major commercial problem worldwide. Asubstantial portion of the software and digital content actuallypurchased by consumers is illegally copied, that is it is copied withoutregard to the copyright rights of the actual owners. Computer softwareand content typically being distributed on digital media is readilycopied. The legal weapons against such illegal copying or piracy arerelatively weak and hard to enforce.

Therefore there has developed the field of copy protection, which refersto technology to frustrate such copying rather than to the legalremedies available to copyright owners. A variety of copy protectionschemes have been developed over the years generally for digital dataand media, and these also apply to computer software. One currentsoftware copy protection technique includes a dongle, which is a pieceof hardware containing an electronic serial number that must be pluggedinto the computer to run the protected software. This adds substantialcost for the software publisher. Another method is bus encryption, anencrypted code for use in secure cryptosystems. This is typically onlyused in high security environments such as for financial transactions.Another technique is a registration key used when running a computerprogram (software) and required to execute the program (software). It isalso known to use code morphing or code obfuscation which hides theexecution logic of the protected software code. Most of these copyprotection schemes create extra expense for the software vendor or extratrouble for the software user in terms of installation and use.

A typical personal computer copying scheme (program) of the type widelyavailable to hackers and others provides a disk image of the file to becopied. Some of these schemes actually bypass certain known copyprotection schemes. Some copy programs are intended for use in the gamefield, and others in the general computer software field.

Generally there is an ongoing competition between the hackers or pirateswho wish to make illegal/unauthorized copies of commercially availablesoftware and the software vendors and content providers who wish toprevent such copying by technical means. Therefore there is an ongoingneed for new copy protection methods.

SUMMARY

Provided here is a copy protection method and apparatus to confusecurrently available personal computer software (and other content)copying packages by use of unexpected (“illegal”) special characters inthe volume (or directory) name for the software or other content or datasubject to being copied. This method can be used alone or with a broadrange of other known copy protection technologies such as RipGuard(available from Macrovision Corp.). Also provided here is a method andapparatus to defeat the confusion method, thereby allowing copying ofsuch copy protected software.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 shows a set of volume names for the Windows operating system.

FIG. 2 shows a volume name with a special character.

FIG. 3 shows the volume name of FIG. 2.

FIG. 4 shows the FIG. 3 representation with the special charactersremoved.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION Copy Prevention Method

This disclosure is directed to modifying the way copyrighted content(including software and other data) on an optical disc or other computerstorage media is authored (created) such that special characters areincluded in the associated volume name, for the purpose of thwartingattempts to make an unauthorized copy by use of a general purposecomputing copying product. A “volume” in computer science conventionallyrefers to a single accessible storage (memory) area with a single filesystem, typically resident on a single partition of a hard disk drive. Avolume is also called a logical drive. Both Windows and UNIX typeoperating systems use volumes.

The Apple Macintosh operating systems, such as MAC OS X Leopard also usevolumes, as does Linux (a UNIX type operating system).

The usual practice employed in the creation of a volume name is to useone or more standard ASCII characters or keyboard characters which arerecognized and accepted by operating systems and application software ofvarious cross platform-computing products. Many applications used inmaking unauthorized copies of copy protected content use the volume nameof the content to establish a directory and/or filename on the hard diskdrive of the computer that is being used to make the copy. Thus,although the characters used in the volume name may not be critical foraccess or the playback of the original content (such as stored on anoptical disc), it can be critical in the process of attempting to make acopy of the content.

By inserting certain ‘unrecognizable’ characters, ‘illegal filename’characters or non-standard keyboard characters into the name of thevolume, it has been found that some existing software applicationsand/or operating systems will fail in their attempt to create a file ordirectory with that volume name. This results in an aborted andunsuccessful attempt to make the unauthorized copy. Each operatingsystem specification specifies which are the relevant characters, alsoreferred to here as special characters.

Presented here is an example (in the Windows context) for altering avolume name of an optical disc storage. FIG. 1 shows in a conventional“screen shot” several volumes, with one conventional volume name as“MVSN TEST”. The present method would insert, modify, replace orsubstitute one or more special characters in the volume name as shown inthe example of FIG. 2: “MVSN TEST . . . ”. In this example, the addedspecial character is the horizontal ellipsis symbol ‘ . . . ’ which isplaced at the end of the volume name. This character can be generated bysome word processing programs using the ASCII character code for thesymbol, 133. More specifically, in this example the character wasgenerated via a standard PC (personal computer) keyboard using theshortcut key method of Alt plus ‘0133’ from a numeric PC keypad. Whilethis particular character would be accepted by the file namingconvention of most Windows operating systems, it was found that thischaracter foils the copy attempt by several currently available copyingapplications (programs).

There are several other special characters that can be employed such asthe ‘illegal filename characters’ prohibited by most Windows operatingsystems: \ / : * ? “ < >| ”. By judiciously adding these and/or otherASCII characters and/or ANSI Extended ASCII characters and/ornon-standard keyboard characters, a volume name can be used that willprovide protection from unauthorized copying while not negativelyimpacting playback or use of the original content of the volume.

For MAC OS X Leopard, unrecognizable, illegal or non-standard keyboardfilename characters are the forward slash (/), the NUL (which marks theend of a name) and the colon (:). For UNIX-type including Linuxoperating systems such characters are the forward slash (/) which is thedirectory separator and NUL (or NIL).

Circumvention Method

Also disclosed here is a complementary “defeat” method or circumventiontechnique to allow copying of content or other data resident on opticaldisc or storage media (typically in the form of a computer file orfiles) that is copy protected by use of ‘unrecognizable’, ‘illegalfilename’ or non-standard keyboard characters in the volume name asdescribed above, so that the copy protected content can be successfullycopied onto a hard disc drive or other recordable media. Generally inthe U.S. such copyright defeat technologies are illegal under theDigital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA); hence the current descriptionis not intended to advocate, endorse or recommend use of same.

The first example of such a method of creating an unauthorized copy froma file which has earlier been copy protected as described above is tocreate a new generic (and conforming to the operating systemspecification) volume or directory name (such as MVSN_Test or anygeneric volume or directory name) on the hard disk drive or otherstorage media and process the associated files to the new directory orvolume, thereby giving the new volume or directory a conforming name andwhere its content is a copy of that of the protected file.

The second example of such a method of creating an unauthorized copy isto create a new user defined and conforming volume or directory name(such as: MY_DIRECTORY or any generic name) on the hard disk drive orany storage media and similarly process the associated files to the newdirectory or volume.

The third example of such a method of creating an unauthorized copy isto check character by character in the copy protected volume ordirectory name for any ‘unrecognizable’, ‘illegal filename’, ornon-standard keyboard characters and create a new volume or directorywith the same content and a similar name but without those‘unrecognizable’ characters or ‘illegal filename’ characters in the newconforming name, and process the associated files to the new volume ordirectory.

The fourth example of such a method of creating an unauthorized copy isto check character by character in the copy protected volume ordirectory name for ‘unrecognizable’ characters or ‘illegal filename’ ornon-standard keyboard characters and remove those ‘unrecognizable’characters, ‘illegal filename’ characters or non-standard keyboardcharacters to create the new conforming name, and process the associatedfiles to the new volume or directory.

As an example of copy protected volume names of an optical disc, FIG. 3(same as FIG. 2) shows the volume name as “MVSN TEST . . . ”. In thisexample, the horizontal ellipsis symbol “ . . . ” is the‘unrecognizable’, ‘illegal filename’ or non-standard keyboard character(or characters).

FIG. 4 displays the resulting altered volume name MVSN TEST without any‘unrecognizable’, ‘illegal filename’ or non-standard keyboard charactersin it. The alteration is carried out by, e.g., one of the above fourexemplary methods. This altered volume name could also be made into adirectory on a hard disk drive or any recordable media, and its contentis that of the original content.

A corresponding apparatus for each of the above methods (both copyprotection and defeat hereof) is the actual alteration program (code)which executes respectively the methods of FIGS. 2 and 4. Such programsare readily coded by one of ordinary skill in the art in any convenientcomputer language, in light of this disclosure.

This disclosure is illustrative and not limiting; further modificationswill be apparent to those skilled in the art in light of this disclosureand are intended to fall within the scope of the appended claims.

1. A method of copy protecting stored content or data in a computersystem environment having an operating system, comprising the acts of:providing a volume or directory designating a storage area in a computerstorage medium, the volume or directory having a name, the nameconforming to requirements of the operating system; altering the name ofthe volume or directory to include at least one character not recognizedby the operating system as appropriate respectively for a volume ordirectory name, whereby copying of content of the volume or directory isinhibited.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one characteris not in conformance with file naming requirements of the operatingsystem.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one character isan ASCII or extended ASCII or non-standard keyboard character.
 4. Themethod of claim 3, wherein the at least one character is selected fromthe group consisting of: . . . , \, /, :, *, ?, “, <, >, |, NUL and ”.5. The method of claim 1, wherein the operating system is one of aWindows-type operating system, a UNIX-type operating system and aMacintosh-type operating system.
 6. A computer readable medium storingcomputer code for carrying out the method of claim
 1. 7. A circumventionmethod of allowing copying of a volume or directory of copy protectedstored content or data in a computer system environment, the volume ordirectory designating a storage area in a computer storage medium andhaving a name, the name being copy protected by including at least onecharacter not recognized as appropriate for the name by an operatingsystem of the computer system, the circumvention method comprising theacts of: creating a volume or directory; assigning a name to the createdvolume or directory that conforms to respectively volume or directoryname requirements of the operating system; and assigning the content ofthe copy protected volume or directory to respectively the createddirectory or volume.
 8. The method of claim 7, wherein the createdvolume or directory name is user defined.
 9. The method of claim 7,wherein the created volume or directory name is generic.
 10. The methodof claim 7, wherein the created volume or directory name conforms to theoriginal volume or directory name and with any character not recognizedby the operating system deleted or modified.
 11. The method of claim 7,wherein the operating system is one of a Windows-type operating system,a UNIX-type operating system and a Macintosh-type operating system. 12.A computer readable medium storing computer code for carrying out themethod of claim 7.